3.3.2: Main Elements

The transformational leadership theory has four main elements namely, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, individualized consideration, and idealized influence together define a transformational leader whose main focus is to drive the organization towards a specific vision or future position.

Inspirational Motivation

Inspirational motivation of a transformational leader is used to promote the role of the leader in provision of challenge and meaning to followers in a way that motivates and inspires them in their work. In transformational leadership, the leader should carefully articulate the future state and vision of the organization to followers in a meaningful way (Odumeru, 2013).

This is an inspirational communication of messages that build confidence by delivering information that encourages workers to believe in the organization and its future outlook. Inspirational motivation refers to the leader's ability to inspire confidence, motivation, and a sense of purpose in the followers. It is the degree to which leaders articulate a vision that is appealing and inspiring to followers. The transformational leader must clearly articulate a clear vision for the future, communicate the expectations of the organization and show commitment to the laid down goals of the organization and the team. Other desirable behaviors of the transformational leader are continued optimism, enthusiasm, and ability to point out the positives and negatives without bias. Therefore, a transformational leader is a source of authority and motivation to achieve the desired organizational goals and acts as a reference point for followers in a transformation mission or undertaking by a team (Rolfe, 2011).

Leaders with inspirational motivation challenge followers with high standards of morality, communicate optimism about future goals, and provide meaning and sense to the tasks at hand or problems being addressed. However, to succeed, a transformational leader needs to have followers who have a strong sense of purpose. There is need for the transformational leader to motivate followers to action for what they believe in. It is this purpose and meaning that provides the energy that drives a group forward. The followers should also be willing to invest more effort in their tasks, be positive, be willing to be motivated and be optimistic about the outlook and believe in their own abilities and that of leadership to deliver the desired results (Kabeyi, 2020).

Transformational leadership should articulate an organizational vision in a manner that is appealing to the subordinates or followers. They do so to improve organizational effectiveness, by presenting optimism about the outlook because of the impending changes. Transformational leaders appreciate that change usually threatens workers and so should make effort to address their concerns by accepting feedback and addressing their concerns. Effective transformational leaders use various strategies like citing success stories on organizational transformation. These leaders address subordinates’ concerns by inspiring them to see things differently which facilitates creativity and innovation (Sainidis, 2020).

Intellectual Stimulation

Intellectual stimulation, is ability to stimulate follower’s efforts to be innovative and creative through questioning assumptions, doing things in a new way and reframing problems. Transformational leaders encourage creativity, shared learning and innovation. Transformational leadership encourages both leaders and followers to pursue their intellectual curiosity and apply their imaginations to come up with new ideas and solutions to problems (Savovic, 2017).

The purpose of intellectual simulation is to increase the workers’ interest in assignments and create awareness of the various challenges at work and increase their ability to solve problems and encourage them to be creative and develop new ways of doing things. Intellectual stimulation refers to the degree to which a leader challenges prevailing assumption, takes risks and solicits followers’ ideas about a task or challenge at hand. Unlike transactional leaders, transformational leaders value creativity and autonomy by their followers. Transformational leadership supports its followers by involving them in the decision-making process and stimulating their efforts to be as creative and innovative as possible to identify solutions to prevailing business challenges or institutional problems and situations. To this end, the transformational leader challenges assumptions and solicits ideas from followers without criticizing. The leader helps change the way followers think about an issue and frame problems and obstacles. The vision the leader conveys helps followers see the bigger picture and succeed in their effort. Transformational leaders stimulate and elicit creativity in the followers so that they can become independent thinkers. In this leadership style, learning is taken as a value while unexpected or emergency situations are taken as opportunities to learn and develop the team and leadership. Transformational leaders allow followers to question, think about issues, problems, and opportunities, and develop better ways to perform their tasks. Intellectual stimulation from this discussion suggests that a transformational leader must be innovative, risk taker and remains positive about all situations and should not buckle on trial and encourages followers to remain focused, innovative, and creative.

Individualized Consideration

Individualized consideration appreciates the need for a leader to recognize the follower’s individual needs and facilitate developmental support through interventions like coaching and mentoring. This makes a transformational leadership a supportive leadership which demonstrates consideration, acceptance, and concern for the needs and feelings of the followers. The behaviors of a supportive leader are effective management of emotions, listening carefully, showing concern for the follower’s welfare and demonstrate evidence of caring, and demonstrate consideration for the feeling’s followers, including providing sympathy.

Personal recognition involves giving employees direct incentives like praises and acknowledgement of their specific effort and input at work in realizing specific targets in a way that encourages learning and collaboration at work with colleagues. Individualized consideration also refers to the degree to which the leader personally attends to each follower’s needs, acts as the mentor or coach to individual followers in a manner specific to their situations. As human beings, each follower or member of a given group has specific personal needs, personal interests, and group desires and expectations. Some followers are motivated by money, while others are motivated by change as others just excitement while in some cases, a combination of factors.

Vision refers to shared values that are ideological in nature and that lead to internalization of organizational goals and objectives. Therefore, a vision is an idealized picture of the organizational future that is based on the organizational values and aspirations. Vision refers to the ability to clearly express and define the picture of the future position of the organization. The transformational leader should have ability to clearly present the future of the organization to all stakeholders.

Idealized Influence

Idealized influence calls for strong sense of ethical practice by leaders and a leadership e driven by the commitment to do what is right and just. Through idealized influence, transformational leaders should articulate their values and beliefs in whatever they do and should carefully evaluate the moral and ethical implications of their decisions and actions which should be admirable, respected, and trusted by the followers. In their leadership role, transformational leaders work as role models for high degree of ethical behavior and display a charismatic personality that influences other followers to want to be more like them. This implies that transformational leaders should be admired and emulated by their followers. Through idealized influence, transformational leaders should show willingness to take risks and adhere to a core set of values, convictions and ethical principles in their actions and conduct that are worth emulating by followers. It is through this concept of idealized influence that the leader builds trust with followers and the followers, in turn, develop confidence in their leadership. Transformational leadership provides role modelling for high ethical behavior, instills pride, gains respect and trust in the followers. As a development tool, transformational leadership has spread already in all sectors of western societies, including governmental organizations (Savovic, 2017).